LucasH

When two classes just work out... I'ts just great. My SO and I have found our happiest combination on LOTRO, and now all we want to do is play together all the time!

I mentioned that we tried out some Hobbit Burgs and had then switched over to a Dwarf Champion and Hobbit Minstrel combination, and we are now a bit further into that. My Dwarf is level 21 at the moment, whilst my SO's Hobbit is level 18. At first we missed that sense of solidarity because we couldn't run together the whole time, her in the Shire, me in Ered Luin, but once we were up to that point where we could run around together, so Bree-Land, we have had a marvellous time!

The Dwarf Champion is such a fun class to play, your essentially a moving wall of blades, and that's just a heck of a lot of fun. When you play as a Dwarf, you have a greater sense of your character, too, because you don't just get a generic human character model, you get a sense of being a part of a mythos, being part of the story, you watch your Dwarf fighting through hordes of Orcs, and you feel like you really are a part of Middle Earth... It's a much more accessible feeling when your playing as a mythological species, rather than a human. Of course, that only works with something that has always been a part of myth to you, if someone had never heard of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or any of Tolkien's work, then they might pick up the game and think playing as a Hobbit would be utterly rediculous, and what are these short fat people? But nearly anyone would still find a Dwarf accessible because recorded myths of Dwarves have existed back into the 12th Century, and probably before that too.

Because of Tolkien's work being so well known today, Hobbits have become a part of today's Western Mythos, so when my SO plays as a Hobbit, she too gets that feeling of being part of the mythology of the world of Middle Earth. It's a great feeling, and it's terribly fun to watch our two stunties running hell-for-leather across Middle Earth.

I don't feel like having any LOTRO down-time right now, but I don't have a choice. You see, servers are down for maintenance today, so I have to wait. I have to be patient. I have to find something else to do in my regular gaming time because the servers need to be rebooted. But... I don't want to wait, and to tell the truth, I feel like being petty about it.

I know the servers needed to go down for a while, everything needs a break, an oil change, a fresh coat of paint, I do understand that. But whilst on some days I am perfectly mature and understanding about that, there are other days like today where two hours where I had scheduled to play and now I cannot play is more than a small bother, it is irritating, frustrating, and downright inconvenient. And we all know that I should never be inconvenienced, right?

Okay I think I have gotten my baby rant out of my system now. I knew that the servers needed a good reboot because, really, there are some ongoing issues at the moment that I heartily look forward to being resolved. For one, earlier today I am running around, doing my own thing, when I can't move. I can look around and see others moving, but I am stuck. My SO tells me from her computer room that she too is stuck, and then she tries logging out and back in whilst I wait in-game. I then see a message in my chat box that I had lost connection to the chat server, I waited longer whilst my SO was unsuccessfully trying to log back in and eventually saw the message that the connection had been re-established. It's hard to know with any certainty if that was LOTRO or my ISP crapping itself, as the latter is a substantial option.

The other issue that is positively irksome is mobs - that's a gamer word for the AI controlled foes you kill - becoming confused when you are attacking them. This is shown by a stylized question mark symbol above the enemy's head. You can't hurt the enemy when they are like this, and they can't hurt you. This leads you to get close to the creature in order to break the confusion, and they still don't come out of it. So you start running off to do whatever it was you were doing in the first place, but oh no, now that Warg isn't confused, and now he's wailing on you! It is funny, if annoying, and I hope it was fixed. Now I'm going to go play LOTRO.

Now that I have clearly outlined what Gold Farming is, I will go into my own personal opinion on the matter.

Firstly, an anecdote. When I was new to the world of MMOs, I tried Everquest II. I got into it, for a while, and was a member of a guild. I saw advertisements for buying gold, and being new to the whole thing, had no idea that this was an illegal in-game practice. So I paid to have 10 gold sent to me in game. With my new pile of gold burning a hole in my pocket, I bought a rather awesome set of armor off the Auction House.

One evening, I sat with my Guild members at a meeting. We sat, laughing, chatting, exchanging jokes and humorous anecdotes, when suddenly, my awesome armour started disappearing, piece by piece. A person sitting near me uttered the words "Oh no! You've been hacked!" and before I could log off, all my armour was gone. That same person from the guild gave me some spare armour, but it wasn't nearly as good as my previous set.

A few hours later I received a letter in the in-game post. It was from one of the game moderators, in it they told me that I had been caught in the illegal practice of gold buying, and that everything that I had purchased with the illegal gold had been removed from my account. I was warned that if I did it again, I would face further, more serious, action.

This stunned me, I couldn't believe that I didn't know that buying gold was illegal, I couldn't believe that the website I had purchased the gold from didn't mention anywhere that this was an illegal practice. I felt as if I had done something wrong, but I had had no idea.

As I said, I was new to MMOs then, and now know much better. Some say that the effect to the in-game economy is exaggerated by game developers to try to deter the general game populace from buying gold, but I don't particularly care for that argument. I believe that if this practice has any ill effects on the game, then I don't want it going on. I feel that you are missing something of the game when you are buy gold. What do you play for if not to build up your character? If you find this too boring, then maybe you should alter your play style? Maybe you should alter your mental approach to the game?

As for the Gold Farmers themselves, I feel a minor sense of irritation when bombarded with their spamming advertisements, but little more than that. It is so easy in LOTRO to report and ignore them, so they don't bother me all that much. I don't want them to be there, I don't encourage their illegal practice, but they don't aggravate me most of the time.

If you have followed my blog at all, you may have come to realise I am a pretty unsociable sort. I am antisocial. I don't enjoy being around large groups of people, and even small groups wear me out in short order. I am a highly expressed introvert, that's the psychological term for it. Ohhh, look at my learnings!

As a gamer, being antisocial really isn't an issue. Being an MMO player and antisocial is another matter entirely. I love the ongoing nature of an MMO, the fact that the game is always being worked on and updated, and even with the monthly fee, I am saving money over buying a new game every couple of months.

As I duo all the time with my SO, I don't really have to interact with other players all that often. Something I am greatly thankful for. Last night, my SO and I tried a Fellowship quest we have never before tried. It was quite fun all in all, but there was of course the issue that we needed more people for the group. Time for a PUG. A pick up group. This is a group that you don't know, but you all need the same quest so you team up and try for it. PUGs have a bad reputation, because you can get stuck with any moron, and there is nearly always one of them in your group.

You will know them by their stupid names. I have such a vendetta against poorly named characters, I call them WoW-Kids, because the only other place I have seen such stupid, lore-inappropriate, crap names, is the five minutes I spent on the World of Warcraft free trial. Those five minutes were a trial and testament to my open-mindedness.

In spite of having one of these WoW-Kids in our Fellowship last night, and another who seemed to have real issues communicating, and yet another who tried to run the show when they really shouldn't have, we got through. In the end my SO and I had a good time, we fought our first troll with these characters, ended up with troll boot-prints all over our faces, ears ringing from being hit in the head with giant rocks, and palpitations from the intensity, but we took the bastard down. Now back to not talking to anyone in-game for the next few play sessions.

The main story quest line in LOTRO is set up in Volumes, Books, and Chapters. So far there are two Volumes. Within those two Volumes, there are a number of Books, 14 in Volume 1 and 7 so far in Volume 2, and the individual quests that make up those Books are called Chapters. Make sense?

So, when Book 7 was to be released, it was announced that an update to all the initial content, the quests you play through when you first get into the game. The leveling system was also to be changed, you level up much faster now.

I and my SO created new characters so that we could go in and experience all these updates first hand, so I could then write about it. I have played a fair bit of the intro stuff, getting into the mid teen levels now. Obviously the new faster leveling is going to be quite noticeable. Something which has immediately grabbed my attention is the fact that, now that I am leveling so much faster, I am not getting enough silver to cover the cost of upgrading my skills. This is really, really, frustrating.

The opening sequence is also much easier, which is kind of disappointing too. But then, certain quests have been altered, where you now have to be a few levels higher than before to complete those quests without having your ass handed to you. Again, annoying.

There is also now an optional quest tracker, an icon on your mini-map that points to the next relevant location in the quest that you are currently working on. I don't like this, so I don't play with it on. There is also now the 'self resurrect'. This means that if you died, which is actually running away because you have lost all your Morale, you used to have to go back to a stone circle, unless a Minstrel was there who could resurrect you on the spot. Now, you can do this for yourself, but only once per hour or half hour, depending on your level.

As someone whose main character is a Minstrel, I find this self-res thing pretty annoying, but it isn't all that bad. I can deal with that.

Skill icons, now have an altered appearance too, and whilst I appreciate from a Minstrel's perspective that it is nice not to have the damn lute on every button, I totally only use a drum , the icons are now overly complicated, making the image rather unclear, and the new colour pallet is a bit to gaudy or fiery if you ask me.

I understand the good reasoning behind the new leveling system, any new players coming to this game are not going to want to spend months playing before they get to the new and exciting content. The issue I have is that the implementation feels a little Beta to me... not quite complete and ready for everyone. I know it has to be in-game so that the devs can get enough feedback on it to fix, alter, adjust what needs fixing, alterations or adjustments... I suppose it is just frustrating to feel like a guinea pig.

So overall, it will take some getting used to, but I am pretty okay with the adjustments to the game that I have seen so far. But please Turbine, don't make the game any easier!